


At the Beginning and at the End

by complex_andhera, fujoshi-senpaii (complex_andhera)



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-21 02:30:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1534310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/complex_andhera/pseuds/complex_andhera, https://archiveofourown.org/users/complex_andhera/pseuds/fujoshi-senpaii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the surface, they are just rivals. </p><p>Dig deeper, and you will know why. </p><p>(AU, Hanamiya and Kiyoshi meet as kids and later, as teenagers and adults, they ruin each other while falling in love.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kiyoshi's Parents are Dead

They were neighbors for a short time, as little kids (though in the future, Hanamiya will deny this vehemently, saying that their old high school rivalry is the only relationship between them. Kiyoshi know better, and smiles to himself quietly).

Hanamiya is sitting on the sidewalk with his feet tentatively set on the street a chubby five year old kid, bouncing his older brother’s worn basketball a few inches up and down in front of him, thick eyebrows drawn together as he concentrates hard to prevent himself from losing control of the ball and having it bounce out of his arms and into the oncoming traffic in front of his house.

He’s wearing a blue blazer that his mother calls his “play clothes”, but Hanamiya could tell that he look ridiculous with the long sleeves dangling awkwardly from his short arms, and fought her hard just to put it on.

Which is how he ended up in his particular situation, storming away moodily from the procession of people gathered in the backyard of his neighbor’s house and wearing all black, in exchange for grabbing the basketball siting in the front law and playing with it by himself underneath the gray skies of drizzly April afternoon that made him sleepier and more cranky than he usually was.

He didn’t understand why his mother dragged him here, didn’t understand why they were all crying and why an old man was reciting verse from the Bible and why there were flowers absolutely everywhere, big pink, swirling masses that nauseated him and made him sneeze loudly.

This is when he sees Kiyoshi for the first time in his life: he finds him standing in the middle of his front lawn, crying wet, dribbly tears away from the mournful looks of his grandparents and aunts and the rest of his family who came to honor the memory of his dead parents.

He hardly understands what death is, only that now his mother won’t read him stories at night and his father cannot come outside and play with him anymore on the cool night when he isn’t too tired from work, and that realization alone makes him dissolve into a whimpering , snotty mess with wide, innocent eyes that serve to startle and fascinate Hanamiya in same way that his mother’s ceramic doll pieces, set far away enough from Hanamiya’s grubby chubby child hands in a glass showcase that towers over his head that he could only look upon them and admire their delicate features until he got bored and decided to torment the cat by stepping on his tail, do.

Hanamiya doesn’t actively want to torment this boy-not yet-so scoops the basketball up and hugs it to his chest as he he wobbles over to the five year old who towers over him and asks him what’s wrong by drawing his thick eyebrows together and puffing his cheeks up until he gets uncomfortable enough to talk.

“M-my parents…”

He trails off, but Hanamiya finds himself more interested in his vulnerability than in his story, and without thinking he shoves the basketball hard into Kiyoshi’s arms and looks up to him challengingly.

He stops crying immediately.

“Jeez, aren’t you older than I am?” Hanamiya pronounces deliberately, and sneers when Kiyoshi nods embarrassedly and starts wiping up his tears with chubby, balled up fists. He stands with his feet planted firmly apart, determined pout gracing his chubby features, and nods his head resolutely.

He takes the ball from Hanamiya and bounces, hesitantly, once, twice, than two more times, each swipe of his palms up and down getting better than the last one. Hanamiya smiles, a small one, as Kiyoshi looks up at him, eyes widened in amazement, as if he’s seen something life-changing in the few shaky bounces that he was able to manufacture with his chubby hands enveloped by Hanamiya’s tinier ones as he guides him on how to move with the textured, orange ball taking up all the room in his hands.

They pass to each other lightly, and Kiyoshi giggles for the first time since Hanamiya has seen him, a happy, gurgly sound that makes him so startled that he almost drops the ball that Kiyoshi carelessly tosses high into the air out of pure glee. He shakes his head and is about to yell at Kiyoshi for distracting him, for throwing the ball so high that he’d never be able to reach it, but before he can run over the hit the boy, Kiyoshi grabs him first, and hugs him tightly with the ball trapped between their bodies. “Thank you.” He whispers, and looks to Hanamiya with such a generous smile on his face, eyes crinkled and corners of his mouth turning up playfully, that Hanamiya blushes before he can control himself and shoves him away angrily.

“D-don’t be a baby!” He yells, and pushes Kiyoshi away harshly and steal the ball back in order to stomp back to his house before anything more embarrassing can happen. He’s not used to being touched so familiarly like this, the label of a “precocious child” leaving him mostly isolated and walled off from most of the kids his age, shuffled between tutors who can barely keep up with his electrifying intellect and flawless memory, let alone his generally sour attitude. He feels kind of happy, but he squashes that feeling down immediately and turns to glare at the boy who’s plopped down on the ground and looks almost betrayed by him.

“Whyyyyy?” He whines, pouting and truly clueless as to why Hanamiya is so upset, and before Hanamiya can run away, he wobbles and tries to right himself by grabbing onto Hanamiya’s shirt pulling himself back up so he towers over him again and his chestnut hair blocks out the light of the setting sun. Hanamiya’s yelps when he’s grabbed, and tries to rip Kiyoshi’s hands off even though his grip is vicious and determined to not let go. He pulls on Hanamiya’s shirt while he’s trying to get rid of him. His eyes widen and he backs away as if he’s just remembered something. “Oh! We can’t be friends because we’re strangers, right? And you’re not supposed to talk to strangers, isn’t that what mommy always says?” He rattles on without pause, his breath hitching at the word “mommy”, but he continues on even as Hanamiya clicks his teeth impatiently and almost tells him to get lost. Kiyoshi sticks his hand out cheerfully, “My name is Kiyoshi Teppei! Let’s be friends, eyebrows-chan!”

That’s the last straw for Hanamiya. He cannot take any more of this cheerful, giant kid who happens to live next to him and cries to easily and trusts people even easier and has the nerve to comment on his eyebrows.

“Leave me alone!” he screams, and pushes Kiyoshi down harder than he did last time, hard enough for him to fall squarely on his butt and scrape himself enough allow little trails of blood to come from his asphalt-covered knees. He yanks the basketball back from the street and runs back to his front door without giving the foolish giant an opportunity to anything more to him.

He slams the door loudly, and Kiyoshi is left outside, alone again, with the sun almost disappearing over the horizon and his grandparents beckoning out the last of their visitors and weakly calling him back into the house so his can eat some dinner and go to sleep at last.

He feels some sadness lingering in again, but as he draws his knees to his chest and sees the slight blood on the tiny cut on his knee, he smiles to himself.

  
Instead of treating him like he’s just a fragile kid, instead of offering him apology after apology and air-restricting hugs that were mostly unwanted from strangers and distant relatives he’d only seen once before, this kid who lives on his street and plays with a giant orange ball forced him to smile, to stop being a baby , and to get up, at last, and learn how to do something instead. He stands up, finally, and dusts off his knees before making his way back inside the now too-quiet house. He plasters a smile on his face, for his grandparents, and for the next eighteen years, he isn’t sure how to stop pretending that everything’s okay.

Shortly after that, he moves, to his grandparent’s house a little further outside Tokyo, and Hanamiya watches from outside, watches the movers move huge boxes into a truck, watches the tiny family and the smiley child wave to him before getting into a car. He scowls when he catches himself watching, and forces himself to look at his book instead of at the receding car that leaves with little more than a puff of smoke and Kiyoshi's tiny, chubby face pressed up against the glass window.


	2. 8 years later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this is extremely self indulgent and not very well written, but I love this ship to death and I'm trying to get better! I hope you like it!

Hanamiya does see Kiyoshi again. At a basketball game, of all places.

Of course, he's a brilliant player, and of course, he's point guard with deadly accuracy and a charisma that has fan girls screaming at the top of their lungs. Hanamiya is only startled for a second before he rolls his eyes and takes his seat in the bleachers next to his irritating, squint-eyed senpai, surrounded by the rest of his team members and a meadly of screaming fans.

He observes him from afar, his eyes lingering a little longer at the only middle school student who towers of the rest of his team mates. Kiyoshi's school is a favorite, and has a track record that's nothing to sneeze at, and before he noticed him in the huddle with the rest of his team mates, he thought that he would spend the next hour or so sitting on the bleachers, bored out of his mind, prepared to memorize the exact moves of yet another Saturday match.

He had only come to check out their competition for their match at the end of the week, but he finds himself...distracted. He watches Kiyoshi make basket after basket and his blood starts boiling. This guy was only a naive kindergartner the last time he saw him, when did he turn into such a big shot? He can barely remember the moves of the game, except that Kiyoshi’s team had won. The baskets pass together in a blur, and he can barely keep up with the score as well as he used to. He corners him after the end of the game, ditching the rest of his team (but not before Imayoshi gives him a knowing smirk) in favor of ambushing him the second he leaves the locker room.

Hanamiya doesn't even have to say anything, Kiyoshi knows.

"Eyebrows-chan!" he calls out in greeting.

Hanamiya scowls and punches him. Square in the jaw, he leaves a nice bruise and some of his irritation dissipates.

"Yeah yeah." He mutters nonchalantly, looking down and rubbing his knuckles in order to avoid eye contact while Kiyoshi massages his sore jaw.

"What the hell are you doing back here?"

Kiyoshi closes his eyes and rubs the back of his head sheepishly.

"Ah, well, my grandparents moved me back up here. Wanted me to go to all the best schools and all, y'know?"

He gets an excited look in his eyes, like a puppy, and Hanamiya almost wants to barf when he asks

"Oh? Do you play basketball, too?"

He rolls his eyes and tries to look disgusted. He wants to say, "Duh, Of course I play basketball, I'm the one who first put the stupid orange ball into your hands, idiot." but he doesn't. Instead, he just focuses him with a menacing look and shrugs aloofly.

"Eh. Here or there."

His eyes scan the empty stadium and he watches Kiyoshi spin the ball on his long fingers to make up for the awkward silence before finally giving into the urge to steal the ball away from him. Kiyoshi is shocked but his instincts start kicking in and he chases after Hanamiya, who at this point is already almost halfway down the court. He runs, laughing, getting even sweatier than he was at the end of the game, and tries to block Hanamiya has he shoots for a basket. They go back and forth and are matched pretty evenly, Hanamiya notes with a grimace. The tall fucker seems to intercept every one of his baskets, be it if he jumps in close range or shoots from the opposite end of the court. He tries every trick in the book, elbowing him squarely in the ribs, sending a swift kick to his shins, faking to the left and then landing his forearm in his face. He gets the baskets, sure, but nothing seems to faze Kiyoshi. He just smiles amicably and tries to laugh it off, stealing the ball nonchalantly with his unusually large hands before Hanamiya even knows what happening and shooting with nearly perfect accuracy.

They play for one hour, then two, and then the time seems to slip by entirely. The lights in the stadium still stay on, and neither of them wants to stop, Hanamiya because he naturally wants to crush all of his opponents, and Kiyoshi because he loves to see Hanamiya worked up. Kiyoshi doesn't have parents who would come fetch him and shoo him home for a warm shower and a hot dinner, and Hanamiya's parents could frankly care less about what their genius son gets up to in his free time, so they continue playing, Hanamiya stealing ball after ball and Kiyoshi using the power of his ridiculously large hands to make sure every ball kissing the rim of the next will make it in. They're both panting heavily by the end of it, dripping sweat, and a silent look that passes between them. Without saying a word, they mutually agree to stop playing, or at least take a short break.

Kiyoshi guzzles his water and Hanamiya steals the bottle away to chug some himself. Kiyoshi rolls his eyes, he was just about to offer him some anyways, but he gets distracted by the way sweat pools from Hanamiya’s neck into the dip of his collarbone.

"When did you get back?" Hanamiya asks, chest heaving and in between pants.

"I've been here for a few months..." Kiyoshi trails off and takes a sip from his water bottle.

He offers the bottle to Hanamiya, which he snatches out of his hands and gulps down immediately. Kiyoshi watches him fondly and Hanamiya wants to wipe that look off of his face immediately He takes a huge gulp of water and spits a large quantity of it at Kiyoshi's face. He sputters, indignant, and Hanamiya cackles mercilessly, going in to drench him with more water from the bottle. Kiyoshi actually yelps, but he gets his revenge by grabbing a bottle of orange Gatorade and unleashing it all over Hanamiya’s face.

“What the hell-“ Hanamiya’s eyes widen comically and his eyebrows turn into fuzzy, scrunched caterpillars at the apex of his forehead, as he rushes to tackle Kiyoshi and wrestle the bottle out of his hand, spilling his own fair share of Gatorade and soaking both of their jerseys in retaliation. Their shared pants and grunts echo through the empty stadium, but soon Hanamiya throws his entire body weight over Kiyoshi’s body and has him pinned underneath him in no time.

He holds his wrists high above his head, and it takes a second for him to stop struggling, to accept the comfortable warmth underneath him and then Kiyoshi is smiling up at him and laughing, and even Hanamiya cracks a slight smile. His breathing evens out and Hanamiya can hear his heartbeat, faintly, although Kiyoshi will not stop trying to kick Hanamiya’s ankles out from underneath him and flipping him over. Tsk. Hanamiya tightens his iron grip on Kiyoshi’s wrists but before he knows exactly what he’s doing, Hanamiya finds himself leaning in closer, his eyelashes almost brushing over the skin of Kiyoshi’s cheeks.

“Um….” Kiyoshi trails off, trying to hide his blush by turning his head to the side, but Hanamiya can’t help himself and leans down, buries his head in the crock of Kiyoshi’s neck and inhales, deeply, before biting down on the sensitive skin and leaving a small hickey. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing (and Kiyoshi seems just as confused, going by the sharp intake of breath and the way that his heartbeat accelerates underneath Hanamiya’s weight), but he feels the needs to satisfy some deep, primal instinct inside of him, a persistent, irritating buzzing underneath his skin that suddenly quiets down when his lips finally make contact with Kiyoshi’s.

His eyebrows furrow angrily and he closes his eyes because he doesn’t know what else to do, the humming that has been bothering since before the beginning of the game, since he first saw the chubby five year old crying fat tears in his backyard, has finally quietened down, and he doesn’t want that piece of serenity to dissipate immediately, so he keeps kissing Kiyoshi, on his cheeks, on his neck, even on his eyelids. The Iron Heart doesn’t have any words, but his eyelids slide closed and his breathing is ragged. Hanamiya can feel one giant hand fist in his t-shirt, and his own hand closes around Kiyoshi’s shoulder tightly, scraping the bare skin not covered by his jersey. Kiyoshi bites his lip, hard, and his eye open wide immediately. At that same moment, the lights of the stadium all turn off at the same time, leaving them both swearing and trying to gather their stuff up in the darkness.

When Kiyoshi finally goes outside, Hanamiya is nowhere to be seen. He smiles to himself and gathers his gym bag higher on his shoulder, ready to make the long trek back home.


End file.
